688 stories by "Wendy Caster"
If you like Bill Irwin and David Shiner, you will like Old Hats. It has everything you could ask for: baggy pants, brilliant physical humor, sublime silliness, and the magical ability to wal…
John Doyle is where Sondheim musicals go to die. His Sweeney Todd, with its instrument-playing cast, fractured staging, and missing throat-slittings, wasn't Sweeney Todd, and his Company, wi…
Bethany begins with Charlie (Ken Marks), a third-rate motivational speaker, practicing his spiel in the mirror. "And I'll tell you one thing about [your] higher power," he says. "He wants yo…
Clive, written by Jonathan Marc based on Baal by Bertolt Brecht, and directed and starring Ethan Hawke, is yet another tale of a male artist so charismatic and tortured that people line up t…
Kate BaldwinFiorello!, the 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, requires a lead actor full of energy and charisma. In the current revival at Encores!, Danny Rutigliano, while likeable and ph…
In his one-man show, All the Rage (directed by Seth Barrish), playwright-performer Martin Moran shares his intimate exploration of the sometimes-thin lines between hatred and love, victimhoo…
A young man dances energetically in his dorm to the music his iPod feeds into his ears. Another young man sneaks into the room and puts up posters of Che and Kurt Cobain. The first young man…
If silliness can be an art form--and I believe it can--then The Mystery of Edwin Drood is an artistic triumph. From the pre-show call-and-response to the audience-chosen denouement, this mus…
A screen filling the back wall of the stage springs to life with vibrant video footage of the Everglades and other South Florida parks. Voices speak of nature, honoring nature, the importanc…
Vivien Leigh, Robert TaylorWaterloo BridgeWhen I was a kid, Sunday was one of the highlights of my week because it included the Sunday NY Times Arts and Leisure section, with its robust and …
In 2012, Show Showdown published 146 total posts. These twenty were the most read--or at least the most-clicked-on. I have tried to find a theme, but with no luck. Broadway, Off-Broadway, Of…
An interesting thread on critics and spoilers on All That Chat got me thinking. As a theatre blogger, I've already thought about the role of a critic quite a lot, as discussed here. One conc…
One show I accidentally neglected for my top ten list was Fun Home.* This amazing musical version of Alison Bechdel's brilliant graphic memoir, by Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron, was one of th…
One of the luxuries of being a blogger rather than writing for a publication is being able to pick and choose what shows to see. Because I get to focus on plays that interest me or are writt…
Four hundred years after it was written, Volpone remains a delight. Volpone is a con artist, and his con is simple. He lets it be widely know that he is dying--and choosing an heir--and the …
The ambitious Extant Arts Company recently presented two shows in rep: Sophocles' Antigone (translated by Sarah Sharp with Extant Artistic Director Greg Taubman) and Taubman's Progeny, a pre…
In Ruby Preston's likeable but awkwardly written novel Show Biz, theatre critic Ken Kantor's suicide sets off shock waves that eventually change the lives of nasty producer Margolies, his am…
I wanted to like A Civil War Christmas almost as much as it wanted to be liked. Playwright Paula Vogel's sincerity is quite apparent, as is director Tina Landau's creativity. But this tale o…
The Flux Theatre Ensemble continues their hot streak with the delightful Hearts Like Fists, currently at the Secret Theatre one subway stop into Queens. Three masked crime fighters, all wome…
There is nothing new under the sun, yet a truly excellent playwright can make a familiar story new and vivid and surprising and heartbreaking. And Amy Herzog is a truly excellent playwright,…
A woman giving up on her marriage; the last lesbian on earth; breasts whose feelings are hurt because their owner finds them too small; a mega-multi-tasking woman with a mysterious past; and…
How do you like your classics acted? Do you like naturalism with a touch of formality? Somewhat stagey orating? A colloquial, contemporary attitude? Monotones? Performances totally in the se…
With viewers on two sides and at tables on stage, the sung-through Murder Ballad happens in the audience's collective face, offering immediacy, excitement, and the chance to be close to extr…
I didn't believe a word of Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale, directed by Davis McCallum. I didn't believe that the characters were real people. I didn't think that the references to Moby-Dick an…
It's 1956, and we're all at the annual quiche breakfast of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein, and the members of the society, widows all, are salivating with ant…
